Notre Dame and Texas A&M knock off top seeds to advance to the women's national championship game

INDIANAPOLIS — Notre Dame and Texas A&M are finally meeting for a national championship.

Just not in football.

The two semifinal winners have the biggest stage in women's basketball to themselves in one of the biggest surprise finals in NCAA tourney history. None of the traditional powers — Tennessee, Connecticut, Stanford or Baylor — is around to play, marking the first time since 1994 without a No. 1 seed in the title game.

"This is what women's basketball needs," A&M coach Gary Blair said. "It needs regional finals, national semifinals and national final games like this to sometimes wake up America."

And they look a lot alike.

Both rely on stingy defense. Both beat No. 1 seeds in Indy, and both had to take down foes that had beaten them three other times this season. Texas A&M beat top-seeded Baylor in the regional finals to earn their first Final Four trip, while Notre Dame finally got past UConn on Sunday night.

One of the upset winners will become the first No. 2 seed to win it all since Maryland in 2006. And they will do it in an arena less than 10 miles from Butler, the giant-killer playing in its second surprise NCAA men's championship game on Monday night in Houston.

It will be a shocking end to a season in which everyone expected the tournament bracket to go essentially by the book.

Texas A&M (32-5) feels right home in its first trip to the national championship. From the spate of howdys and y'alls being tossed about to the frantic finish in Sunday's semifinal victory, the Aggies have just tried to be themselves.

Yet Tuesday night's game could get ugly, too.

Clearly, it will start and end with defense — even though both teams have enough scorers to make things interesting.

Take Stanford, which became the first team in this year's tourney to top 50 points against the Aggies. That still wasn't good enough to reach a third title game in four years.

Now comes the meeting with the Irish (31-7), who are 18-2 all-time in tourney games when they hold foes under 60 points. They didn't do that against UConn's high-powered team, which was trying to win its third straight title. Maya Moore scored 36 points.

But Notre Dame was scrappier, getting to more loose balls, making more key plays and simply outplaying the Huskies down the stretch.

On Tuesday night, they'll have to be even better against a Texas A&M team that has mastered the ability to rattle two of the nation's top teams, namely Baylor and Stanford, in back-to-back games.

Notre Dame will have another advantage, too.

They're essentially playing a home game.

Notre Dame's top player, Skylar Diggins, was the state's Miss Basketball two years ago and has played three state championship games at Conseco Fieldhouse.

And over the last 10 minutes of Sunday night's second semifinal, the crowd noise inside Conseco grew to a crescendo. Irish players responded by going to different locations in the arena and tugging on the front of their jerseys.

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